Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER 2
IN BRITAIN it had been a year without summer. Wet spring had merged imperceptibly into
bleak autumn. For months the sky had remained a depthless gray. Sometimes it rained, but
mostly it was just dull, a land without shadows. It was like living inside Tupperware. And
here suddenly the sun was dazzling in its intensity. Iowa was hysterical with color and light.
Roadsidebarnswereaglossyred,theskyadeep,hypnoticblue;fieldsofmustardandgreen
stretched out before me. Flecks of mica glittered in the rolling road. And here and there in
thedistancemightygrainelevators,thecathedralsoftheMiddleWest,theshipsoftheprair-
ie seas, drew the sun's light and bounced it back as pure white. Squinting in the unaccus-
tomed brilliance, I followed the highway to Otley.
My intention was to retrace the route my father always took to my grandparents' house in
Winfield-through Prairie City, Pella, Oskaloosa, Hedrick, Brighton, Coppock, Wayland and
Olds. The sequence was tattooed on my memory. Always having been a passenger before, I
had never paid much attention to the road, so I was surprised to find that I kept coming up
against odd turns and abrupt T-junctions, requiring me to go left here for a couple of miles,
thenrightforafewmiles, thenleft again andsoon.Itwouldhavebeenmuchmorestraight-
forwardtotakeHighway92toAinsworthandthenheadsouthtoMountPleasant. Icouldn't
imagine by what method of reasoning my father had ever settled on this route, and now of
course I never would know. This seemed a pity, particularly as there was almost nothing he
wouldhavelikedbetterthantocoverthediningroomtablewithmapsandconsideratlength
possible routings. In this he was like most Midwesterners. Directions are very important to
them. They have an innate need to be oriented, even in their anecdotes. Any story related
by a Midwesterner will wander off at some point into a thicket of interior monologue along
the lines of “We were staying at a hotel that was eight blocks northeast of the state capitol
building. Come to think of it, it was northwest. And I think it was probably more like nine
blocks. And this woman without any clothes on, naked as the day she was born except for a
coonskincap,camerunningatusfromthesouthwest…orwasitthesoutheast?”Ifthereare
twoMidwesternerspresentandtheybothwitnessedtheincident,youcanjustaboutwriteoff
the anecdote because they will spend the rest of the afternoon arguing points of the compass
and will never get back to the original story. You can always tell a Midwestern couple in
Europe because they will be standing on a traffic island in the middle of a busy intersection
lookingatawindblownmapandarguingoverwhichwayiswest.Europeancities,withtheir
wandering streets and undisciplined alleys, drive Midwesterners practically insane.
This geographical obsession probably has something to do with the absence of landmarks
throughout middle America. I had forgotten just how flat and empty it is. Stand on two
